California Games (poker)
A set of card room games, formerly called Asian games, some
of which resemble poker, but are not strictly poker,
in which players place bets before receiving the hands on which
they wager. Others resemble blackjack.
In these games, to get around the legal restriction against
banking games, the only interest the house has is to
take a portion of every bet; one player acts as banker, playing
one hand against each player in turn.
These games include pai gow (played with tiles, and not a card
game at all), pai gow poker, super nine (also called super pan
nine),
California blackjack (also called X blackjack, where X is the
name of the club),
California Aces (a variant of blackjack in which the object
is to get closest to 22, with two aces being the best hand;
similarly often called X aces), 13-card (not played with a banker).
